Motivated by The Sword in the Stone's success, White moved to Ireland in 1939 and immediately began work on a sequel, The Witch in the Wood (later titled The Queen of Air and Darkness). Like its predecessor, The Witch in the Wood was favorably reviewed, although some critics found the story of Arthur battling rebellious Gaels less effective and more tedious than The Sword in the Stone. Writing in The New Yorker, for example, Clifton Faidman argued that "the novelty of [White's] special brand of humor, that of anachronism [is] pretty well exhausted by the first book." Still, White continued his romance with the Arthurian myth and, in 1940, released The Ill-Made Knight, his study of Lancelot and Guenever's adultery. Beatrice Sherman, writing in The New York Times, called this installment "a more thoughtful, adult and subdued piece of writing" than its two predecessors.
It was not, however, until 1958 that The Sword in the Stone, The Queen of Air and Darkness, and The Ill-Made Knight appeared together in The Once and Future King, along with a concluding volume, The Candle in the Wind. After The Once and Future King was finally released, readers on both sides of the Atlantic praised White's grandiose and accessible retelling of Malory's story. The Once and Future King proved so successful that the rights to it were bought by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe — the Broadway musical team responsible for Brigadoon and My Fair Lady — who turned White's novels into the 1960 musical spectacular, Camelot. Although White had nothing to do with the production, he approved of and enjoyed it. (The play was made into a film in 1967.) In 1963, Disney released an animated version of The Sword in the Stone.
The Book of Merlyn, which White had intended as the fifth installment of his series, was not published until 1977. According to John Mullin, who reviewed the novel for the journal America, World War II was responsible for the delay in the book's release: White's pacifism (as well as the paper shortage) ruined its marketability. Mullin notes in his review that this fifth volume of the story differs from the first four in its "saeve indignatio, a fury at the persistently cruel and pompous human race, which White expresses through argument and satire rather than romance." The Book of Merlyn is an interesting curiosity that reveals White's anger at what he saw as the violent and heartless world that surrounded him.
